Monday, May 20, 2013

Sweet or Savory Yeasted Waffle Sandwiches

The cover story in yesterday's Parade magazine was all about the winner of the 2013 Armed Forces Chef of the year competition, Senior Chief Derrick Davenport. As a side bar, there was a "By The Numbers" section that showed what the US Armed Forces consumed in 2012. Guess what was glaringly missing from that list of milk, bacon, ground beef, and soy sauce? Eggs! Fresh eggs aren't commonly found in a war zone. I knew that already, thanks to my spouse and my brother.

One night my spouse said to me "could we have eggs for breakfast?" Of course I'm indulging the guy--he's going to be eating powdered eggs, if he's lucky, for a long stretch so I'm happy to fix over easy eggs for him while I can. But what to serve with the eggs? If you've checked the breakfast section of the recipe index up there ----------------> to your right, you'll know I am a waffle fan. I like how I can easily make up the batter at my convenience and then take Simon for a walk. When I'm back, I fire up the waffle iron, keep the first few rounds of waffles warm in the oven, and then sit down to eat with my family.

The quote above, and the reason for this post, came about because I ran out of baking powder. I can handle running out of all purpose flour (I've got whole wheat, bread, and cake flours as well), running out of pumpkin (I've also roasted and put up butternut, acorn or mystery winter squash in the freezer), running out of honey (what about molasses, maple syrup, or sugar?), or running out of spinach (kale, swiss chard, turnip or mustard greens?). But not baking powder. I NEED that stuff!

Without baking powder, I needed to use something else to give that "lift", so I grabbed my jar of yeast and fired up the computer. I found a recipe at the King Arthur flour website. Since you only need to let it sit an hour, it fits in with my usual waffle M.O. and I went for it.

But sometimes your plan goes awry, or agley, and your end result is not as expected. Which is where my creativity kicked in. The waffles turned out kinda flat. Instead of despairing over a failed fluffy waffle recipe*, because life is too short to despair over still perfectly edible food, I seized the opportunity to make some waffle sandwiches. Enter the well-stocked pantry: I grabbed some cheeses, some put up peach preserves, some 'too runny for sandwiches' blueberry jam, and some leftover chopped meat and veg from a pizza you'll be seeing soon.Here's what we ate:

Homemade peach preserves and goat cheese

Blueberry jam and goat cheese

Pepperoni, Italian sausage, corn, red pepper, red onion and cheddar

If you routinely make flat waffles (I once had a waffle iron that really sucked and never made fluffy waffles no matter what batter I put in it) or have the occasional failure, consider turning them into waffle sandwiches. The sweet/tangy/creamy combination of jam and goat cheese is really delicious--a definite keeper. The savory combination of cooked meats, chopped vegetables, and cheese was also delicious. If you have leftover meat or roasted vegetables and cheese, try it. This unexpected breakfast was tasty.

Are you wondering what happened to my spouse's request for eggs? Don't worry! I fixed him a pair of eggs first thing, then later once the kids were up we all sat down to waffle sandwiches.

*I think the recipe is a good one, if you're out of baking powder and buttermilk, and I'm positive my yeast was fine since I use it for pizza dough. The next time I made it, I let the batter sit overnight like the recipe suggests and the result was a fluffier waffle, but I guess I'm just used to more flavorful waffles, since the taste was . . . well, let's call it a delicious blank canvas for waffle sandwiches!

Dear Son is always requesting waffles. And as much as I love yeast baking, I have never made yeast raised waffles. Now I am intrigued enough to make yeasty waffles (and my husband was just talking about a recipe for yeast waffles he saw). Time to try them! And I am forewarned to have goat cheese (already have some leftover from our stuffed chicken) and jam ready in case we need to jazz them up. Thanks for the inspiration! Beautiful pictures, by the way!Sarah

You had me at the Robert Burns quote - the waffles were just a bonus! I love the idea of a waffle sandwich, and these all looked great. I rarely make waffles, but between you and Meghan, I'm getting some waffle cravings. Maybe a breakfast-for-dinner day is in my future! Thanks, Kirsten!

Melissa,Breakfast for dinner is such a treat for me! Breakfast for breakfast is as well, though it's better when I've been up a while since I don't wake up hungry like other members of my family (in addition to the composting pigs).Thanks!

Hey Kirsten: Those look pretty darn delicious to me. Yes, I know how you feel about perfectly edible food. Sometimes good to eat, but just not blog worthy. Or my photos suck so I won't use it. Thanks for sharing.

Marlene,Blog worthy--yep, you nailed it. There are times when I am very grateful I got advice from Alanna before I even started blogging to stick to a schedule I could maintain. Three recipes a week--well, two and a pizza ;) means that with all the cooking I'm doing anyway, I'm able to tweak a recipe idea a time or two to get it right before it appears here. My problem now is I've got too many posts in varying stages of readiness and not enough time for them to appear, so I'm scheduling them out up to a year in advance. Not exactly a calamity, though! :)Thanks!

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